Make a change
by Louie0228
Summary: My take on what happened between Sam and Addison in the finale.
1. Chapter 1

**This one, all be it very late, is for Corazon90 and fills in the gaps we were cruelly left with in the finale. **

**Chapter One: Running.**

She was running. Whatever way she put it, whatever reasons she gave; she was running. Addison felt the world move around her as she stood on the gleaming tiles of the airport's departure building. The noise of life had faded into faint buzz orbiting around her stationary world. Boarding a plane and pretending the last four years had never happened would have been so easy, it was the change she was looking for, the change she was making. Except she wasn't making a change, Naomi was making a change – starting a life with the man she loved but she wasn't, she was running away, she was pretending, fooling herself that going to Fiji for two weeks with a stranger was never anything other than running away. She clenched her cheeks as she tried to stop the tears that were threatening to fall from her eyes. She couldn't just turn her back on the Practice, on her friends; her life. The changes she needed to make were right in front of her in LA. Pulling her case behind her she headed straight for the front of the building and the bustling taxi rank the tears now scarring her cheeks.

"Addison?" Sam's voice echoed the confusion he felt as he spoke from the window of his car. "What are you doing here?"

"Nothing" Addison lied as she quickly dried her tears.

"Addison get in the car" Sam said gently as the traffic began to build behind him.

"Sam I'm fine. I just need to get a cab" Addison said as she unsuccessfully tried to hail yet another cab.

Seeing that she was going to take a little more persuasion, Sam pulled his car over in to a parking space and jumped out of the car, raising his hand to the line of annoyed motorists behind him.

"Addison, what are you doing? Let me give you a lift" Sam said as he jostled the crowd to get to her. His voice was filled with concern, he didn't know why Addison was at the airport laden with luggage and looking like she'd just stepped out of the 'summer essentials' section of a clothing catalogue but he was sure that there was more to the story than just a missed flight.

"I was going away Sam," Addison said in a dreamlike state as people pushed her out of the way to hail a cab "I was leaving LA."

"Let me take you home," Sam offered "we can talk about it at home."

"Home," Addison repeated as she considered the word. "Ok"

Sam took Addison's case from her hand and, using it to push his way through the mounting crowd, lead Addison towards his waiting car. After putting the case into the boot of the car he slipped into the driver's seat of the car beside Addison.

"What were you doing at the airport?" Addison asked suddenly as she realised Sam's car was not what had bought her to the airport.

"I was dropping Naomi off" Sam said simply, although his voice unsuccessfully hid a deeper feeling. "she made a last minute decision to go with Fife and seeing as I was the one who told her to go with him I couldn't refuse when she asked me for a lift."

Addison only nodded in reply before turning her attention to the passenger window and the lives being lived outside it. A thin piece of glass separating her and other people's lives, people she'd never met, people she never would, all living their lives around her. Sometimes she thought it would be interesting to live someone else's life, just for a day, for an hour, maybe then she'd find out where she kept going wrong. She often wondered what marked the route of people's lives, she liked to think it was fate, predetermined yarns spun intricately together but the more people she operated on, the more lives she saw change under her finger tips, the less fate seemed plausible.

"I'll just get your bag," Sam's voice broke into her thoughts, bringing her back to the present and the now motionless car. She reached out and curled her fingers around the door handle and pulled it towards herself, allowing the outside to penetrate the cocoon she'd built around herself in the car. Everything seemed alien, all the familiar things, the things she'd done a million times, like they were happening outside of her, as if she was a spectator watching her own life. She walked towards her front door her head filled with smog. Back in the airport she had had a moment of clarity but now the haze was thicker than ever. She leant against the hallway wall as Sam lifted her case into the house.

"Come on, I'll make us some coffee" Sam said sprightly as he disappeared into the kitchen, knowing that Addison needed to talk but all too aware that she needed to do it in her own time.


	2. Chapter Two: Crossroads

**Chapter Two: Crossroads**

"I needed a change Sam" Addison's voice was vague and far away as Sam placed a cup of coffee in front of her "I needed, need, to make a change"

"Everything is always changing Addison," Sam offered "and most of the time it is so slight that we don't notice it"

"Why do I always make the wrong choices Sam?" Addison asked as her voice trembled and a tear threatened to fall.

"Addison" Sam purred softly as he moved across the sofa to be nearer to her "you need to stop beating yourself up about the Practice, we're all part of what happened, it's our practice and our mess." There was so much more that he wanted to say to her, about them and the choices they had made but he knew that in that moment she needed him to be a friend, she needed him to put aside all the bad choices they had made and focus on making the right ones now.

"What are we going to do about the practice Sam?" Addison sighed as her body instinctively turned to his, craving the warmth and the comfort she knew he could provide.

"I don't have the answer to that, Addison" Sam replied honestly "but what I do know is that we've all given so much to make Oceanside Wellness what it is and that we can do it again, we can get out of this hole but only if we stick together, only if we fight as a team, as a family."

"Maybe we need a bigger change, Sam," Addison said, the words still only half formed as they left her mouth "when we're together, all of us, at the Practice it's as if we just find reasons to cross the line, reasons to do the wrong thing for the right reasons and it never stops, it never gets any easier."

"And it would be easier somewhere else? On our own?" Sam asked although his question was intended to make her think rather than to illicit an answer.

"I don't know Sam" she replied resignedly. She knew he was right, a fresh start was rarely the answer; it had certainly never been the answer she was looking for. She had tried running and it didn't work. "I need time" she said suddenly. "I need time alone, to think about how to get us out of this mess. Will you tell everyone to meet at the Practice at seven?"

"Of course I will," Sam said softly as he watched her get up from her place on the sofa and head for the stairs. "Addison" he offered tentatively as she walked away from him "I'll just be next door."

Addison nodded as she climbed the stairs and headed for the bathroom; there was very little in the world a hot bath couldn't soothe away.

HERE

"I don't make the right decisions, I never have. I can't make this decision" Addison's voice caught Sam by surprise as she stood in in the open doorway that lead out onto his deck.

Sam crossed the living room and slid his hand into hers "come and sit down" he said softly "talk to me."

Addison followed him obediently, she wanted nothing more than to give into the feelings they had both been fighting but she knew that they were in the middle of something bigger than 'them'; that they were dealing with their friends' lives and futures.

"Talk to me," Sam said softly as they settled on the sofa "tell me the options."

"Well," Addison took a deep breathe, hoping it would help to order the thoughts in her head "we can fight it, we can resist what they're trying to do, it would probably tear us apart anyway, in the end, we'd lose but we'd be fighting for what we believe in, what we've created together."

"Ok," Sam nodded, remaining as neutral as possible, wanting to give her the opportunity to talk through what was filling her head.

"We can dissolve the Practice, go our separate ways, start over." She stopped short as her voice faded, it was the worst yet possibly the best option of them all. They were friends, good friends, but that was the problem – they were willing to cover for each other, support each other, save each other. Maybe they should keep their lives and their work separate. Even as she thought about it she knew it wasn't true – they worked because they cared, about each other and about their patients.

"Or?" Sam said prompting her

"Or we dissolve the Practice but stay together, start again" Addison said with a note of tiredness in her voice.

"Would that work?" Sam questioned, for her benefit, not his.

"I've got the money" she stated "we could do it but do we want to? Do we just have to accept this as the change that has always been coming Sam? Naomi has gone, Pete and Violet are falling apart and we…" she stopped, unable to hear the words leave her mouth because she didn't know what they were, what they should be, what they wanted to be.

"This is not about us," Sam said softly "this is about the Practice, about our family. Look Addison, we're going to have to make a change, things are changing, they have changed but there are different types of change" Sam began to explain as he moved slightly closer to her "sometimes there are things we can't change, we know that, we see it every time some dies in our hands, on our table but there is good change too – change that makes a difference, that makes things better, that makes good out of bad; change for the better."

"You really think this could be change for the better?" Addison questioned him.

"I think it could if we want it to," Sam replied, not wanting to influence her decision but wanting her to make her aware of all the options.

"A change for the better" Addison said thoughtfully as she exhaled deeply.


End file.
